Alexander Karp has written an article that was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education on Saturday. The article is called Analyzing and attempting to overcome prospective teachers’ difficulties during problem-solving instruction. Here is the abstract of Karp’s article:

This article analyzes the experiences of prospective secondary mathematics teachers during a teaching methods course, offered prior to their student teaching, but involving actual teaching and reflexive analysis of this teaching. The study focuses on the pedagogical difficulties that arose during their teaching, in which prospective teachers lacked pedagogical content knowledge and skills. It also analyzes the experience of the course itself, which was aimed at scaffolding the work of prospective teachers on developing their pedagogical content knowledge and skills.

A new newsletter has been published from ICMI, and, as usual, it contains lots of interesting information. I would have liked to post the entire newsletter here, but since it is freely available online, I am only going to point to the table of contents:

1. Editorial: Continuing Professional Development and Effective integration of Digital Technologies in Teaching and Learning Mathematics: Two Challenges for ICMI
2. A XXIst century Felix Klein’s follow up workshop
3. Deadline Extended: ICMI / ICIAM STUDY
4. EARCOME5: First Announcement
5. Chilean Journal of Statistics (ChJS)
6. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
7. ICMI encounters: Hassler Whitney, Laurence C. Young and Dirk J. Struik: Personal recollections
8. Subscribing to ICMI News

You can also check out the archive for a complete listing of previous (and current) newsletters!

Eleanor Chute has written an interesting article about the importance of algebra in school mathematics. It is not a scientific article, but I think it is worth reading even though! (It was published on September 1st in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.) The article is part of a series related to school mathematics, and the two previous articles in the series raise interesting questions about early math and fractions.

Although algebra to many represents a hurdle, or even the graveyard in their mathematical careers, the article claims that:

Algebraic thinking is done even by people who don’t realize they’re using algebra.

After a series of examples, Chute goes on to quote Michele Burgess, who claims that students should not be confronted with algebra for the first time in the Algebra 1 course. This leads me to think about the debate (and research) concerning early algebra, although this is not referred to in this article in particular. If you are interested, I recommend the chapter on early algebra by David Carraher and Analucia Schliemann in NCTM‘s Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning (Lester, 2007), or even Carolyn Kieran’s chapter on algebra in the same handbook.

Reference:

I wish all of my readers a wonderful summer 🙂

I came across an interesting post about a project related to mathematics in early childhood education today. This project is described as “an innovative, district-wide early childhood education initiative”, and it is conducted in Bremerton, Washington (U.S.). Apparently, the project was initially focused on early literacy skills, but they have now started to focus on mathematical skills as well. A goal is to “decrease the number of children (…) with learning disabilities”. An interesting interview with the director of the program: Linda Sullivan-Dudzic has been postend on the Public School Insigths website. They have also written about this program earlier, and the story was originally published on the website of The Center for Public Education.

Thanks to Alexander G. Rivadeneira for pointing me to this story 🙂

My university – University of Stavanger, Norway – has now announced a vacant position/stipend for a PhD student in mathematics education. The position is related to our project “Teachers’ knowledge of mathematics” (which represents an attempt to adapt and use the MKT measures in Norway).

For more information (the website is in Norwegian only) you can contact me (reidar.mosvold_AT_uis.no) or my colleague Raymond Bjuland (raymond.bjuland_AT_uis.no). Please note that the deadline for application is June 29, 2009!

Teaching Mathematics and its Applications has published an article by Zvi H. Perry about Change in senior medical students’ attitudes towards the use of mathematical modelling as a means to improve research skills. Here is the article abstract:

A PUBMED search for ‘mathematical models in medicine’ shows more than 15,000 articles covering almost every field of medicine. We designed a course with the goal of developing the students’ skills in computerized data analysis and mathematical modelling, as well as enhancing their ability to read and interpret mathematical data analysis. The study evaluated the acquisition of research skills and how to understand such data, as well evaluating the students’ feeling of competence. The course was structured as a 1-week (30-h) workshop for final year medical students. The study population consisted of 23 medical students who took the course in the 2005 academic year. Course evaluation used questionnaires that assessed the students’ satisfaction and mathematical knowledge. We found a significant change in the attitudes of our subjects, comparing their before and after attitudes towards their competence in the use of mathematical modelling, academically (i.e. their ability to read and understand articles using math models) as well as medically (i.e. their ability to implement theory that arises from math models to medical applications). We believe that the use of math modelling training in medical education significantly improved the students’ confidence in reading and applying math models in medicine; there is a tendency (albeit insignificant) towards superior results in attitudes of students towards math usage in medicine at large.

A new newsletter has arrived from ICMI (International Commission on Mathematical Instruction), and it contains lots of interesting news! Here is the table of contents:

1. Editorial: The Relevance of Mathematics Education in India
2. ICMI Study 20: Educational Interfaces between Mathematics and the Industry (EIMI)
3. ICMI Study 20: Discussion document (short version)
4. ICMI has a new website!
5. Exhibition “Experiencing Mathematics” in southern countries
6. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
7. Historical vignettes: David Eugene Smith, the proponent of ICMI
8. Subscribing to ICMI News

The entire newsletter is freely available online, and you can also read previous newsletters from the archive.